U.S.-Germany Cooperative Research on Three-Dimensional Regionalization and Modeling for Sedimentary Basin Analysis

该奖项支持堪萨斯大学能源研究中心的John C. Davis及其几位同事和学生与德国波茨坦中央地球物理研究所数学地质系的Jan Harff等人在地质研究方面的合作。这两个小组一直独立致力于改进区域地质建模方法，同时在当地工作，模拟北德意志凹陷和西堪萨斯大陆架。他们现在正在结合他们根本不同的建模方法，以三维区域化为基础，产生一种新的更强大的建模过程。他们合作的一个进一步和更重要的目标是生产计算机软件，在图形计算机工作站上交互运行，可以很容易地用于任何沉积盆地的分区和建模。三维区划是一种定量的过程，旨在将沉积盆地划分为离散的部分，这些部分在特征上尽可能均匀和不同，在地理上也尽可能紧凑。由此产生的细分可以被视为离散的实体，大大简化了盆地的静态和动态建模。越来越需要改进流域分析方法，以便确定能源和水资源的位置，并为环境目的预测流体运动。在工作站环境下可操作的软件中实现这种大大增强的盆地分析方法，将对沉积地质领域以外的领域产生重大影响。这种合作的另一个贡献是，它将地质统计理论的基本概念与东方集团和西方相对独立地发展起来的计算机方法联系起来。欧洲和苏联前社会主义国家的科学家（包括哈夫博士和他在波茨坦的研究小组）在定量地质学这一领域所取得的有价值的进展并不广为人知。基本上，“东方”方法侧重于发现和描述地质构造和过程的不连续方面，而“西方”研究人员则倾向于关注地质性质的连续方面。

This award supports John C. Davis and several colleagues and students of the Energy Research Center of the University of Kansas to collaborate in geological research with Jan Harff and others of the Mathematical Geology Department of the Central Institute for the Physics of the Earth, Potsdam, Germany. The two groups have been independently engaged in improving methods for regional geological modelling while working locally to model the North German depression and the Western Kansas shelf. They are now combining their fundamentally different modelling approaches to produce a new and stronger modelling process, based on three- dimensional regionalization. A further and more significant objective of their collaboration is to produce computer software, running interactively on a graphical computer workstation, that can easily be used for the regionalization and modeling of any sedimentary basin. Three-dimensional regionalization is a quantitative process that seeks to divide a sedimentary basin into discrete parts that are simultaneously as homogeneous and distinct as possible in their characteristics, and also as geographically compact as possible. The resulting subdivisions can then be treated as discrete entities, greatly simplifying both static and dynamic modelling of the basin. There is increasing need for improved methods of basin analysis in order to locate energy and water resources and to predict fluid movement for environmental purposes. Implementation of this greatly enhanced method of basin analysis in software operable in a workstation environment will have a substantial impact beyond the field of sedimentary geology. A further contribution of this collaboration is that it links fundamental concepts of geostatistical theory with computer methodologies that have been developed relatively independently in the Eastern bloc and in the West. The valuable developments in this area of quantitative geology by scientists of the former socialist countries of Europe and the USSR (including Dr. Harff and his group at Potsdam) are not widely known. Basically, the "eastern " approach focused on the discovery and description of discontinuous aspects of geological structures and processes, while "western" researchers have tended to focus on the continuous aspect of geological properties.